


Metal Heart

by threewalls



Category: KAT-TUN (Band)
Genre: Accidents, Alternate Universe, Celebrities, Gen, Robots
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-10-31
Updated: 2010-10-31
Packaged: 2017-10-13 00:11:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,467
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/130687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/threewalls/pseuds/threewalls
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><cite>"Kamenashi-kun needs time to rest," Johnny says, and Kazuya can hear him perfectly, despite the shock. He should be in shock. He feels fine. "You are his replacement."</cite></p><p>Sad Kame-robot is sad.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Metal Heart

Kazuya opens his eyes to Johnny two inches in front of his own, pillows behind his back. He blinks, stills, smiles: instinct. Johnny steps back, letting go of his hold on Kazuya's chin.

Kazuya is sitting on a hospital bed, naked under a thin sheet. The curtains are drawn, day or night, he suddenly has no idea. He does not recognise the room, or remember how he got there. Kazuya hadn't thought his injuries so severe, worthy of a meeting with Johnny without prior appointment. With an apology balanced on the back of his tongue and the back of his neck, he is smiling and he waits.

"How do you feel?" Johnny asks.

Kazuya answers he feels fine, really, perhaps a little tired, a rote response that flags when he realises that he actually does feel fine. Kazuya flexes his toes, attempts to discreetly tense the muscles of his legs under the sheet, but the familiar throb of overworked, overstretched muscles isn't there. What Kazuya feels like is hard to put honest words to, it's been so long. He feels well-rested, and suspiciously pain free.

Kazuya takes the edge of the sheet in one hand; Johnny nods.

Kazuya pulls up the sheet from his body. All the bruises he knew so intimately, the pain with every inhaled breath, their colours and shapes shifting under each daily performance's make-up, were gone. And on his thigh--

"Kamenashi-kun needs time to rest," Johnny says, and Kazuya can hear him perfectly, despite the shock. He should be in shock. He feels fine. "You are his replacement."

On the inside of Kazuya's thigh, perfectly placed so that no costume will ever bare it, is a rectangle of metal, small enough to disappear under the digit of his thumb, with four tiny lights in a row. When he presses in, the metal is unyielding, part of him.

"You will not disappoint me."

"I understand," Kazuya says. He's always done what they've told him, eleven shows in one day, give up baseball (and lie about it), Shuji to Akira, but never this promptly, never without showing his teeth.

"Kamenashi-kun has always been obedient, but the investment you represent is too important to leave in the hands of talent alone," Johnny says. "Look down."

Kazuya watches the lights start to go out, one by one by--

  
There are other gaps in his memory. The times when he wakes with a different haircut, a different colour, or his legs shaved, are reassuring. Sometimes he can spend hours staring in mirrors, and nothing seems different but the time is gone.

Kazuya has otherwise perfect recall. He can memorise a dance by watching it, a song by listening to it, though it takes practice to build up a repetoire of suitable "ad-lib" moments. It surprises him, a little, that no one wonders why he hasn't forgotten how to dance for Seishun Amigo long after Yamapi has. (Kazuya says he practices, that he doesn't often sleep. It's almost true.)

It surprises him that his family don't catch him out. They can't know, his friends can't know, but the thought that they might concerns him, what might happen if he's indiscreet. At least until Kazuya counts up the months and it's September again. He loses two whole days, and when he wakes up, at home, in his own bed, he tries not to think of lifeless rows of Kamenashi in a basement somewhere only Johnny knows. He is not Tetsuwan Atomu.

Sometimes he looks around Johnny's and wonders. Kazuya isn't the only idol with a reputation for wooden drama acting. Before KAT-TUN debuted, before Kazuya had the lead role in Dream Boys that almost killed Kamenashi three years later, KAT-TUN had supporting roles and Taguchi hurt his back so badly he went on hiatus. Kazuya remembers that no one was sure if Taguchi would dance again. And that they weren't allowed to see Taguchi, not for weeks, so long that the jimusho fed out a story about it all being a misunderstanding, not yet another one of KAT-TUN's fights. Sometimes, Kazuya catches himself watching Taguchi flip, feet over head, and wonders if Kazuya wasn't the prototype.

Kazuya starts composing notes to himself, to the other Kamenashi, for when he comes back.  


  


* * *

  
Kamenashi,  
The  ratings for Kami no Shizuku were .  


* * *

  
Kamenashi,  
Yumi-chan is growing up so . Her  was last week, but today I gave her .  


* * *

  
Kamenashi,  
KAT-TUN will have  Dome  series for  in a row.  


* * *

  
Kamenashi,  
First pitch  in the Pacific League opening game 

  


* * *

  
Kamenashi,  
KAT-TUN will have  in  Bangkok, Seoul and Taipei. 

  


* * *

  


Kazuya makes it known that he would like to speak with Johnny, whenever might be suitable. He is polite, but persistent, with his manager, staff and secretaries. He knows he must be discreet, but this is the perfect opportunity: everyone thinks he wants to complain about Akanishi. (Nakamaru frowns when Kazuya promises it's about something else, and won't say what, but he allows Kazuya to wait for Johnny alone.) Kazuya is patient.

It takes two weeks to get the appointment. After two hours sitting outside Johnny's office, Kazuya has fifteen minutes, which is actually only ten even with abbreviated courtesies. Kazuya only needs two.

With KAT-TUN's world tour and Akanishi's LA concerts, surely now is the time for the original Kamenashi, the real idol, to come back. Now rather than later, to give Kamenashi as much time as possible to rehearse. (Kamenashi can sing Kizuna at the foreign concerts.)

Kazuya tries not to think about what will happen to Kazuya. Perhaps they will keep him, just in case, but Kamenashi will be pleased to see his family again, finally, glad to be a baseball special correspondent, and he will be more careful in future. Kazuya is unsure how Kamenashi will learn Kazuya's memories of the past thirty-one months, but there was a contingency plan in place before Kamenashi's accident. There will be a plan to bring him back.

Kazuya hopes Kamenashi will enjoy his messages.

Yumi-chan will have a real uncle again, and KAT-TUN will have a real Kamenashi to shoulder the burden no one will breathe a word of until July at the earliest. Kazuya is the youngest in the group, younger than they all realise, but he will protect them.

Johnny looks at him, for seven long minutes, before speaking.

  
Kazuya waves Koki's questions off with vague promises to eat, yes, later, of course, and works late into the night. It's not unusual that he's the last one to leave. Kazuya waits there until he is summoned.

He follows Johnny from the elevator into storage space: runner rails of old costumes, boxes and crates that could contain anything from glow-in-the-dark katana to rollerskates, rolls of backdrops suspended from the ceiling by ropes.

The lights come on overhead as they walk. Kazuya's been down here before, but he's never come across the wall of metal drawers that Johnny takes them to. There's not many, maybe two or three dozen, all identical. They're the size of capsule hotel room doors, except very square, hard, sharp edges. None of the doors have labels, but they do have locks.

Kazuya does not want to be here.

Johnny inserts one key from a bunch into one lock. The drawer sticks when Johnny pulls, and he steps back, gesturing for Kazuya to take over. Three jerking tugs and it's out.

Kazuya's breath turns white in the suddenly chill air. He's reminded of a Cartoon KAT-TUN episode, one where he ventured into a walk-in freezer again and again, to retrieve items that had been frozen earlier into interesting shapes. A quick mental calculation tells him that it was one of Kazuya's episodes, not a borrowed memory, but one of his own.

This is also his memory. It won't ever be someone else's. Kamenashi is lying flat, frost dusting his hair, the ripped threads of a pair of jeans Kazuya gave up for lost years ago. The empty, bloodless sockets, forever staring up.

"Human bodies can be so fragile," Johnny says behind him. "Luckily, there's a lot we can do with synthetics these days. Everything but the eyes."

  
He comes home, feeds Ran and Jelly and runs a bath. His body is waterproof, of course, because Johnny's boys look good dripping wet. He sits in the water, arms around his bent knees, head tilted back to watch the flickering of candlelight on the bathroom ceiling.

He has two hours until he will need to get out, get ready for rehearsals. He should pass out here. He has the memories, the phantom instincts that tell him what he should do, but no weariness. Kamenashi Kazuya has not been able to sleep for nearly three years.  


* * *

  
Dear Diary,  
At our first concert in Taipei, Ueda  his toe. I think that was all.  


* * *

 

MC  
31/10/10


End file.
